


The Time It Takes To Fall

by ocean_of_notions



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen, Kara thinks about violent things, Kara's head is a scary place, Season 3, allusions to past trauma, post-New Caprica
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-14
Updated: 2008-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-14 15:51:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ocean_of_notions/pseuds/ocean_of_notions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has been out of that apartment less than 24 hours, and she can barely breathe.  Post-New Caprica.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Time It Takes To Fall

Kara Thrace has been back in the Colonial Fleet less than 24 hours.  She returned from New Caprica with nothing but the clothes on her back—the clothes that _he_ gave her—and she longs now for the protective embrace of cotton tanks and cargo pants. The quartermaster takes one look at Starbuck, returned from the abyss once more, and hands over a plastic bin half-full with the scant memories of a life.

She has been out of that damn apartment less than 24 hours, and she can barely breathe as she kneels by her bare bunk—there is nothing but a husband in it—and puts the new old clothes in her bare locker.  Her hands itch for a weapon, and she isn’t sure if she is relieved or scared that she hasn’t yet retrieved a sidearm.  But, she reminds herself, since when does she need a gun to do some damage?

The man in the bunk at her back mumbles and turns in his sleep, and she tells herself this is Sam, _her husband, Samuel T. Anders_ , and she tries not to imagine the ways she could kill him (hands around his neck in his sleep, neck against a corner of the bulkhead, or inside the locker...).  She tries not to feel the emptiness where a gun, knife, heavy weight, _frakking chopstick_ should be.

So she delves once more into the plastic container, and her hand comes up with something of far more value than any weapon, no matter how creative.  All the things in this box are there because she once deemed them unnecessary, unimportant things that no longer belonged to the woman that she was, the woman that had thrown away metal wings in exchange for black ink.  For the first time in a long while, she is glad that in a fit of fear and anger and pain and confusion she left this particular memento behind.

For the first time in a long while, Kara Thrace almost smiles.  Her fingers trace over the edges of the photograph, worn and smudged, and with a jagged fold line cutting it in two.  She looks at herself, an incarnation of herself she doesn’t recognize, and feels nothing.  She looks at the young man whose arms are around the familiar stranger, and she manages to dredge up the guilt that has been her constant companion all these years.  Guilt is all she feels.

She doesn’t look at the third figure.  She doesn’t have the right.

Instead, she puts the picture in a cigar box—empty of cigars, of course—that has been nestled in storage with her sweats and undergarments and other mementos of a life long left behind.  She puts the cigar box on her bunk and reaches into the small plastic bin.  It’s almost empty.

Her fingers close around cold steel and she frowns in surprise.  She lifts the blade into the artificial light and stares, transfixed.

_Not a lot to show for a life, huh?_

She thinks of the look in Kendra Shaw’s eyes as she tossed that damn razor to her.  She thinks of Kendra Shaw and she thinks in a cold, detached sense that she understands.  She shivers as she remembers that Shaw got this blade from Cain, and who knows what lost soul Cain got it from.  She thinks that this blade has left a trail of blood and broken people.

She’d be scared if she weren’t so frakking tired.  She’d be scared if she had something to lose, if she weren’t already broken, fallen from the razor’s edge.

The knife slides easily into her boot.  Her husband wakes and tries to kiss her.  She tries not to kill him.  She succeeds.  He doesn’t.  It isn’t his fault.  He’s not like her.

fin


End file.
